The Essay
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Ponyboy is writing the essay, but it turns out that it is a bit more fiction than fact, and that the people he's basing it on are not quite like the people in his essay.This story will show Ponyboy's real life behind "The Outsiders".
1. Chapter 1

There seems like there isn't much more to say, and the voice falls short, no one is buying it anymore. You can't talk in the guises anymore. Are things being stripped away? Is it time to be truthful? But you've been dealing in the lies for so long now that you can barely remember what the truth is.

So send this whirling into space, who will read it, who will care? You can see so many of them, the hoods and greasers just falling under the streetlights, getting sucked up in their terrible and empty lives. Can one kid change all that? Change people's views of it, of the package that seems to let people know what to expect?

I balled up this version of my essay and started another one, more concrete this time, start from a real place, like the movie theater or something. Talk in my voice, or a voice that was similar to mine. I don't know how it happened but I screwed up and was going to fail English. I'd been going out too much, hanging out at the drive-ins and the pool halls and getting into fights with the socs, the rich socialites from the west side. I've been falling asleep in the vacant lot with Johnny because we were talking and I'd just drift off and then Darry would be pissed. And on school nights, too. Johnny never had to be home. His parents didn't care too much about him. But the end result was I'd missed one assignment too many and had to write an essay to make up the grade. Some kind of personal experience thing. It didn't have to be exactly true, Mr. Syms had said, it could be embellished. I liked embellishment. But I still didn't know what the hell to write.

I heard the slam of our screen door and then Johnny was in my doorway. I looked up at him, noticed his jet black hair and jean jacket. He always wore that.

"Look at this," he said, slamming a switchblade down on my desk. It was all rusted out and looked like it was twenty years old.

"Where'd you get that thing?" I said, and then I noticed his black eye. His eyes were dark, but this one looked like someone had punched him.

"Found it," He sat on the bed and stared at me from his black eye.

"What happened to you?" I said, peering at that black eye and some other injuries, scratches on his face and a tear in his jeans right at the knee.

"Fight," he said, and grinned. Johnny would fight with people, usually socs, but sometimes greasers, too, sometimes even me, but I was bigger despite being younger and could usually take him. His old man was kind of rough on him, and that made Johnny kind of violent.

"Oh, yeah, with who?" I said, looking at my essay again, getting a bit of an idea.

"Some soc," he said, picking up the rusted knife and twirling it around.

"Don't play with that thing, you'll get tetanus," I said, and he just looked at me like he didn't know what the hell I was talking about. He didn't go to school too much, he was lacking a lot of basic information. I'd always noticed that about Johnny.

There was this incident awhile ago where Johnny had gotten into a fight at the lot and it didn't go too well for him. He lost. He was fine, I mean he had some busted ribs and his nose might have been broke but he was basically fine, he swore about that fight and those socs for weeks, and this soc he just fought with was probably there, who knew? But what if Johnny was a different kind of kid, more innocent and quiet and nice despite being roughed up at home and all? And then if he'd gotten beat up real bad at the lot by a bunch of evil socs, and then he'd started carrying that switchblade around for protection…

I could change everything. I could say my parents were dead and that my oldest brother had to quit college to work two jobs to take care of me and my middle brother, Soda. My oldest brother was off at college, and he was like six years older than me and I'd really hardly knew him. But if my parents were killed in a car wreck and he'd had to stay here and take care of us then that would lead to all kinds of dramatic situations. I could change everyone I knew to fit into this neat little story I was thinking of. I could make Johnny like this scared, abused little saint of a kid. Johnny was really nothing like that. I could make my brother Soda as handsome as a movie star and someone who really understood me and everything. He basically ignored me most of the time. I mean he was an okay brother and all but he certainly didn't look like a movie star and he didn't understand everything, like I wished someone would.

I looked over at Johnny, who was messing with that switchblade despite the fact that I told him not to. Johnny was kind of crazy and violent, but he could be sort of nice, too, sometimes. I mean, sometimes if his old man was too rough on him for something he would be all upset, and I'd feel kind of bad for him until he went and beat the shit out of someone else. That was how he dealt with that. In my little story I could make Johnny be like this super quiet, haunted little kid who's old man beat the shit out of him all the time, which that was actually true. But in the story Johnny could still be this great kid, like someone who really listened to your problems and all of that. I don't think I'd ever told Johnny any of my problems. I wondered what would happen if I did?

"Hey, Johnny, I'm kind of failing my English class," I said, looking at him to see how he'd respond. The Johnny that I was making up would be real sympathetic and would listen real hard and everything.

"Yeah, so what? So am I," he said, flipping the switch on that blade and watching it pop out.

"So, don't you care?" I said.

"What do you want me to do about it? Do your homework or something or do extra credit, or just fail it, it ain't the end of the world,"

"Thanks, Johnny,"

This side of him, this violent, not giving a shit side, I could make that into a whole other character altogether. Someone with a tough sounding name and white blond hair, so I wouldn't confuse them in my head. This would be the best damn essay Mr. Syms had ever read. I just had to work more of it out.


	2. Chapter 2

I leaned my head on my hand and peered at Johnny. He was like, he lived right down the street and we hung out quite a bit because of that. He was a proximity friend. We were really very different. I wasn't anywhere near as violent and crazy as he was, but my home life wasn't as awful as his was, and I tried to remember that. I was a bit more like the Johnny character I was imagining for my essay. I didn't like violence and didn't really see the point of it. I tried to listen to people, really listen to them when they told me something, I tried to be interested in their lives and not just focused on my own, like so many people were.

"Are you just going to work on that stupid essay all night?" Johnny said, and I glared at him.

"I told you I'm failing English. I need to work on this,"

"Do you wanna go play pool or something? Pinball, maybe?" I looked at his bruised face, the tear in his jeans, that crazy look in his eyes. He didn't do very well in school because he hardly ever went and when he did he didn't try, but Johnny was smarter than he did in school, I guess. In my essay I could have him stay back because of struggling with it, struggling to read but still being smart.

"Are you deaf, or just stupid? I have to do this. Unlike you, I actually care if I flunk out of high school,"

That got him. He glared back at me and dropped that rusty as hell switchblade on the little table I had beside my bed, and he tackled me. Everything went flying and I nearly got the wind knocked out of me.

"Jesus Christ, Johnny! Get offa me!"

"No! Say uncle! Don't you dare call me stupid!" He had my arm kind of twisted and pinned behind my back. I could usually take him because he was smaller than me, but this was all positioning and the surprise of the attack.

"You are stupid! Why don't you do some homework once in a while!" This caused him to tighten up on my arm and the pain shot from my arm to my back. He was gonna wrench the damn thing right out of the socket.

"Give in, man, say uncle!"

"Uncle, alright! Uncle! Let me up, Johnny…"

He did, and I rubbed my arm that was sore now.

"Maybe Soda will go with you, ask him," I said, and I was really just trying to get rid of him. I had to concentrate on this, and with Johnny jumping on me every two seconds it didn't make it too easy. For a second, a moment, he had this kind of hurt look. This kind of disappointment and almost sorrow, but it was only there for a second and then it was gone, and he shrugged and agreed to ask Soda. What would end up happening was he would bug Soda until he went with him.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Johnny took off, and I heard him talking to Soda in the living room. He had left the rusty switchblade on my little table, and I picked it up carefully, not wanting to get tetanus myself. I closed my eyes, thinking of my essay. If Johnny was this poor, abused kid but so nice and everyone wants to protect him, and he gets the shit beat out of him by a bunch of socs then he gets a switchblade to protect himself. Maybe they cut him or something and he'd have this scar up on one cheek, a sort of visible reminder of being almost killed. Cool. That would be good. What kind of made me think of this was those looks Johnny would have once in a while, like today when I wouldn't hang out with him or when he gets called names for real at school, that look like he's gonna cry or something before it changes to craziness and he pummels whoever is pissing him off. That violent, starting fights with people part of Johnny will be another character, and I liked that idea, too. A tall tough hood who might have even lived in New York City with real gangs, not just the rinky dink gangs we have here.

I stood up, stretched. I thought about Darry being off in college, and when he comes home I feel like I don't even know him. I mean, he is six years older. And this always kind of made me a little sad. He's my brother, after all, and I don't even know the guy. But in this story, our parents killed in a car wreck and Darry would have to give up college and take two jobs to support me and Soda. What a sacrifice. And maybe he would get all strict with me because he wants me to do well, and the stakes are high, me and Soda might get yanked into a boy's home or something, and I'd need to get a scholarship to go to college. And maybe I'd be all pissed off at him and not get it, I wouldn't understand why he was so strict.

I paced in my room, listened to Soda and Johnny out in the living room. Maybe Soda would have to quit school, too, and work at a gas station full time to help with the bills. I heard the door slam and watched out the window as Soda and Johnny walked down the street. Soda was average looking, but he did have a certain charm and managed to get himself a million girlfriends. In this story he'd be so handsome and girls would fall all over him.

There was more to work out. This was background stuff. Character development. I had to admit, it was kind of fun. I preferred this kind of writing to writing about research stuff, which I never really understood the point of. All that stupid information is out there, why did I have to write about it?

"What are you doing?" my dad said, who was suddenly in my doorway.

"I'm working on this essay for English class, it's kind of a make-up essay," I told him. I tried to imagine him and my mom being dead, and I felt cold. That would be awful. And in that case there'd just be me and Soda and Darry and Johnny and this made up tough guy that I'd yet to name, us against the world.


	3. Chapter 3

Too tired now. It wasn't even that late. I yawned and put my head down on my papers, looked at my scribbled notes from way to close. The words blurred themselves together. I couldn't think of this anymore tonight. I stood up and stretched again, looked out the window just to see if Soda and Johnny were coming back. Sometimes Johnny would stay over at our house if his folks were fighting or something, and my parents always let him. You could hear Johnny's parents fighting clear down to our house.

It was only like 9 P.M. Not late at all. All that thinking was making me tired. I was thinking I could kind of make Johnny be a main character, but the quiet, haunted Johnny I was starting to imagine. He could get beat up by the socs real bad, like four guys on one and cut up and bruised and bleeding and everything. Then he'd start carrying around the switchblade in his back pocket. And then, then…I yawned. No more. No more tonight.

I stumbled out into the living room. My mom was watching T.V. curled up on the couch in her robe and slippers. I looked at the way her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders. I thought of how I had both her and dad die in my story, killed in some car wreck. It was too awful to contemplate. I shuddered. But it would be good. I thought of how in both the story and my real life I didn't know Darry at all. It made me sad in both. Maybe I'd call him, it wasn't too late.

"Dad, I'm gonna call Darry, okay?" I said, and he gave me his surprised look.

"Why?" he said, making himself a lunch for tomorrow. My dad liked to sleep until the last possible second, so he did everything he could the night before.

"I don't know, I just felt like it," I said, thinking maybe he wouldn't let me. It was along distance call and all. But he just shrugged so I knew it was okay.

I was nervous calling him. What the heck would I even say? And as I dialed the numbers to his dorm room phone I knew I was kind of calling him for research to my story. In the story Darry would be like a stressed out mess, working all the time, never having any fun. Darry was kind of like that. When he was in high school he would grimly go about doing everything. Homework and football and all of that, even though he was good enough at football that he even hung out with some hot shot socs. It occurred to me that Darry was going to be a soc. Sure. He was in college and he had that work ethic. He'd rise above this poor section of town and his brothers being greasers and all and hanging out with troubled kids with no future like Johnny.

"Hello?" It was Darry.

"Hi, it's Ponyboy," I said, feeling like a real idiot for just calling him. We had nothing to say to each other.

"Ponyboy? Is everything okay?" he said, and I heard real panic in his voice. I felt my heart start to kind of pound in my ears.

"Yeah, no, everything is fine. I just wanted to call and see how you were," I said, even though it was kind of a lie. Nothing was wrong, except I was failing English. And I didn't really want to see how he was, I wanted to see exactly how we interacted so I'd have stuff for my essay. Material.

"Oh, uh, I'm fine. How are you?"

"Good, you know, doing some school work,"

"You're not letting it slip, are you?" Darry, of everyone in my family, was proudest of the fact that I got moved up a year in grade school, and ever since then he kind of thinks I'm this scholar. And he said this last thing with a bit of an edge, like he'd be really disappointed in me if I let it slip, which I did, which I'd never tell him.

"No, it's going fine, I'm just working on this writing project I have,"

"Good. You don't want to jeopardize school at all," There was less than an edge to this than I'd imagine he'd have if mom and dad were dead and he'd given up college so I could go. Man, the pressure of that. I'd crack for sure.

"No, I know. I just wanted to call and say hi and everything, but I gotta get back to my work. Want to talk to dad?" I said, suddenly just so tired of struggling with what to say, of thinking of what to say. I thought I had what I needed, anyway.

"Sure, thanks for calling, Ponyboy," As I handed the phone to my dad I thought I heard a bit of sadness in Darry's voice, too. I thought maybe he knew me and him didn't know each other real well and it was kind of a shame.

I got changed up for bed and put all my papers neatly away and hoped that Soda and Johnny wouldn't come bombing home and wake me up, but they probably would. Both of them could get a little hyper at times. I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard the slam of the screen door, and I heard Johnny talking to my mom in this quiet voice he could use when he wanted something. He wanted to stay over even though it was a school night. And she'd let him, of course, because she's seen the bruises on him from his drunken father beating the shit out of him.

I groaned. I could have gone to sleep but now Johnny would disturb me. My door slammed open and he came in, flipped on the light, sat on the bed. I turned my face into the pillow.

"Hey, Ponyboy," he said, sounding considerably less quiet than when he was talking to my mother.

"Johnny, I'm trying to go to sleep…so if you're staying over just go to sleep or be quiet," I said. I rolled over and watched him even though my eyes were half closed. He looked different when he thought no one was watching him. All that energy kind of drained away, and I felt bad for him again. His parents probably were fighting, both of them drank pretty heavily. And if he went home tonight he'd probably end up getting beat. He looked down and he had this depressed kind of look, his big dark eyes looking haunted for real. In secret moments Johnny really was just like the Johnny in my story. I watched him take off his shirt and kick off his sneakers and curl up on the floor under the extra blanket.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up just a few minutes before the alarm was going to go off and nearly tripped over Johnny laying on the floor, since I forgot he was there. I flipped the alarm clock off and went into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and got dressed. Johnny was still sleeping. I thought I'd see if he'd go to school with me, and I knew my parents wouldn't be too happy about him not going. Not that they were really like parents to him, it was just that they wouldn't want him hanging around the house.

"Johnny, wake up," I said, shaking him. He groaned and rolled away from me.

"C'mon," I said.

"Leave me alone," he mumbled, his head under the blanket.

"You know, you might do better in school if you went once in a while," I told him, nudging him with the toe of my sneaker. He was sitting up now, looking exhausted, but he'd go to school with me. I could tell.

"You're the one failing English," he said, and I didn't say anything. I was failing right now, but my essay was going to blow that teacher away. I watched him hunt around for his shirt and his sneakers and then we both went into the kitchen. My dad had already left for work. My mom was making breakfast.

"Good morning, you two," she said, setting down pancakes in the middle of the table. I glanced at Johnny and saw a funny look on his face, it was this mixture of sadness and envy. I'd been to Johnny's house in the morning. His parents were passed out, usually, and there was a mess of full ashtrays and empty beer and liquor bottles. No one was making pancakes at Johnny's house.

We ate and headed to school. Along the way we ran into some socs.

"Hey, greasers," one of them said, and I would have just ignored it but I saw the look in Johnny's eyes. It was this immediate anger bordering on hatred.

"Hey, fuck you!" he said, and I saw him almost start to charge at them. He would just pound on these guys right before school. I grabbed Johnny around the waist and pulled him back while the socs walked away. When I let him go he spun around toward me, the anger still in his eyes.

"What are you doing!" he shouted at me, and I was weary of this. Johnny exhausted me.

"Me? What are you doing? Are you going to get into a full blown rumble before school?"

"Maybe, they started it!"

"Not really," I said, relieved that at least he seemed to be calming down a little. That crazy look was leaving his eyes, "maybe if you stopped this crazy shit you wouldn't be getting the crap beaten out of you every few days,"

He didn't answer, and he was still mad, and we went the rest of the way to school in silence.

Johnny had stayed back last year, and since I was put up a grade in grade school we were both in the same grade now. But we never had the same classes. I was in the smart classes and he wasn't. I didn't want him to be pissed at me all day, so before homeroom I tried to see if he was mad or not.

"See ya, Johnny," I said.

"Yeah, see ya," he said, and I guess he still seemed a little mad. He'd really wanted to go at it with those socs. He'd get over it though, there was plenty of opportunities to fight with them.

In my science class there was this funny guy named Keith. Keith was a soc, but he was funny and smart and I didn't mind him. I got a kick out of him, actually. No matter what was going on he had to put his two-bits in. When I went into the class there was this huge beaker, it was three feel tall and made of the thickest glass I've ever seen. Keith was pretending the whole thing was a bong and he was taking this giant toke out of it, everyone was cracking up. There were mostly socs and middle class kids in all of my classes, I was the only hoodlum. But since I was younger everyone usually accepted me.

Keith was my lab partner, which made the class pretty funny but a little difficult to pay attention in. I wished I could hang out with Keith more, but he was a soc and that kind of limited our social time. This was one of those instances where I noticed that the socioeconomic divisions that we had here weren't that great, it prevented people from hanging out together and being buddies for no reason other than money.

"Hey, how's your crazy friend doing?" Keith said as we sat down at the lab table. I fiddled with one of those glass stilets. He was talking about Johnny.

"Okay, I guess," The truth was Johnny was very far from okay. All this fighting that he was doing with the socs, and all the chaos at his house, I didn't know. I was worried something bad would happen.

The teacher started class shortly after, and despite the clever remarks Keith would make in an almost continuous stream, I was able to pay attention enough to get myself through the lesson.

After school I was waiting by Soda's locker. I wasn't sure if he was working at the gas station or not, but if he wasn't I was hoping he could give me a ride home. I just wasn't up for walking home with Johnny and getting into whatever stupid fight he'd get into. He's ended up getting me into more than one fight, and I hate fights.

I saw Soda heading toward me. Soda was a little taller than me, and his hair was a lighter brown than mine, it was almost blond. In the summer it would get to be a dark blond. He was just average looking but he did have a nice smile, wide, with his teeth even and white. His hair was lightly greased and he flipped it out of his eyes as he headed over to me.

"Hey, Ponyboy," he said, turning the dial on his locker.

"Hey, are you working today?" I said, watching him gather his books. Soda did hate school. The only things he liked about it were auto mechanics and gym, and I bet he wouldn't mind quitting to work full time at the gas station.

"Yeah, why?"

"Oh, I just wanted a ride," I said.

"Sorry,"

So I headed off, thinking maybe Johnny would get a detention or something. I could hope. As I lit a cigarette on the street outside the school I saw him, his jet black heavily greased hair and worn out jean jacket. I sighed as he fell into step beside me and lit up his own cigarette.

"What, no detention today?" I said, and he laughed.

"Yeah, but I skipped it,"

"You'll end up with a week of them," I said, and he shrugged. He didn't care, he honestly didn't. It was partly because his parents were beyond being able to deal with things like his detentions. The principal could tell his parents he had a thousand detentions and they still wouldn't care.

We walked home without incident, and I almost couldn't believe it. And instead of going to my house he headed home, and I watched him go. As he headed to his house his shoulders tensed up, and he flipped up the collar of his jacket, and he almost seemed to shrink into himself, and I felt bad for him again.


	5. Chapter 5

I was in my room with my papers scattered all over my desk, my scribbled notes. This essay, man, it was killing me. I thought I could do it real good, you know? I thought, sometimes it seemed like I could nail this thing. But it was kind of hazy sometimes. I had to get it straight in my mind. The thing would be that my parents were dead, and that Darry was taking care of me and Soda. Soda would have to quit school and work full time at the gas station. Darry, let's see. Before he left for college he would do some roofing jobs for extra money once in a while. He could do that. And he could have another job on top of that one. He'd bust his ass all day and worry about bills and worry about me getting in trouble and staying in school.

But, beyond me and Soda and Darry we'd have our friends who'd be like our surrogate family, a gang. There'd be Johnny, who was quiet and non-violent, unlike the real Johnny Cade who was very violent. And his parents would be alcoholics just like they really were, and his dad would beat the shit out of him just like he really did, except in this story Johnny would be stoic, quiet, introspective. There was this tiny part of Johnny that was kind of like that, I always caught glimpses of it.

Then the blond tough gang member, the one who lived in New York. This is the crazy, violent side of Johnny that is, to me, most evident. This character would be the one who didn't give a shit and who fought with anyone who even looked at him funny. This character would have vague unsupportive parents that you never really saw or heard about, but he himself would live where he could. On friends' couches, in the backrooms of bars, with women, whatever. He'd ride in rodeos and roll drunks and steal. Johnny didn't do that. He didn't really steal things or jump defenseless type people like drunks or small kids or anything. Johnny pretty much fought against people who deserved it, it was just he did it a lot, and ended up getting his ass kicked quite a bit in the process, but not this character, this blond tow headed guy. He'd always win. He'd be hard as nails and twice as tough with a police record and everything.

I needed more people in this gang. Maybe Keith, the funny soc from my science class. Yeah. He'd be a greaser, and maybe his dad left his family and his mom worked at a bar or something, and he was always over here cracking us up. That would be pretty cool.

I laid my head on my desk and looked at the light fade from the sky. I yawned. I wanted some more people in it, but I couldn't think of any at the moment. I tried out some beginnings. I could be leaving the movies, maybe, and walking home I get jumped by a bunch of socs. And some time before Johnny would have got jumped and beaten real bad, and I'd think about that and worry about it while the socs were attempting to cut me to ribbons…and then, then…something.

It was fully dark out now. I wished again that I could hang out with Keith, that crazy soc putting his two-bits into every conversation. It would be fun. He made me laugh, he made me forget about being poor and being a greaser and dealing with Johnny.

My mom made supper, baked chicken. I ate it, still thinking about my essay.

"Ponyboy, you seem so quiet," my mom said, and I looked at her for a moment like I was surprised she hadn't died in that car wreck, that's how real my essay was beginning to seem to me. It was becoming my life, this life where me and Darry and Soda were all we had and we were working to stay together, and Johnny was so quiet and haunted and tragic, and Keith made us all laugh despite everything, and the tough blond character that I still didn't quite have a name for, he was dangerous and reckless. I blinked and tried to orient myself back to my actual reality. My parents were alive, my oldest brother was off at college and my middle brother was no confidant, no movie star handsome mother figure for me, he was just an ordinary brother who could hardly be bothered with me at all.

"Huh? Yeah. I've just been thinking about this school assignment a lot,"

After supper I helped my mom with the dishes. I didn't want to work on my essay anymore tonight. But I wasn't tired. I figured I'd just go for a walk, even though it was kinda late. I ended up at one of the diners downtown, and ordered a pepsi. In one of the booths I saw this kid I sort of knew from school, this kid named Steve. He was alone, hunched down in the booth, this scowl on his face. I wondered what was up with him.

"Hey, man," I said to him, and he looked up and the scowl disappeared. He invited me over so I grabbed my pepsi and slid into the other side of the booth. His hair was this complicated swirl of corkscrews. There was plenty of grease in his hair, he wasn't too rich, this Steve.

"What's the matter?" I said, sipping my pepsi, not sure I really wanted to know. Over here on the east side the things that could be wrong were pretty overwhelming sometimes.

"It's my old man, he's such an asshole," Steve said, the scowl creeping back onto his face. I squinted at him, wondering if he'd tell me details of his old man being an asshole or not, wondering if I really wanted to know. My own father was pretty good. He never hit me or hardly even yelled at me. I couldn't complain and I knew it.

He didn't go into it and I was almost grateful. Johnny's parental problems were about all I could handle. So I finished my pepsi and got another one and Steve seemed to calm down a little. We talked about neutral things for a while.

It was getting late so I started heading back home. I passed by the vacant lot and saw Johnny there, at least I thought it was Johnny. I almost just went straight home, feeling kind of tired, but I figured I'd stop and have a cigarette with him before I went home. There was a fire there and he was standing near it, and he didn't even barely acknowledge me when I walked over to him. He wasn't facing me at first but when he turned toward me I saw this look on his face, his eyes were kind of red like he'd been crying. He wasn't crying now, I'd never seen him cry.

Something was wrong with him, I knew it was his parents, something at his house. Who knew what had happened? I went to put my hand on his shoulder and he jerked away from me, but not angrily, it was like he couldn't help it, it was just a reaction.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I said, thinking about Steve and how he was upset and that scowl he had on his face. The look on Johnny's face was different. There wasn't as much anger in it, it was closer to despair, defeat. And he didn't say anything for almost a full minute, he just looked at the fire. Then he spoke in this quiet voice.

"I don't know why I ever bother going there. No one there gives a shit about me," That was all he said and I didn't want to pry. I knew it was bad at his house. I'd seen him get a beating once, and it was…I don't know. I felt this kind of helpless, hopeless feeling, and I was just watching. How must he feel?


	6. Chapter 6

"Do you want to go home with me?" I said to him, looking at his subdued, still expression. This was so different from the almost manic violence he usually displays. I kicked at the ground, smoked my cigarette. I didn't want him to have to go home if it was really bad there.

"Naw, it's alright. They'll be passed out when I get home anyway," he said, his voice quiet, and I couldn't help thinking about my essay, and how he was acting just like the character I was basing on him. This would be the Johnny Cade in my essay, quiet, resigned, used to violence but not liking it.

"Okay, man," I said, and took off. I was exhausted.

In school the next day I noticed this girl in my homeroom named Sandy. She had cornflower blue eyes, blond hair. She was kind of pretty, not drop dead gorgeous but pretty in an understated way. She was probably a middle class girl, most of the kids here were. It was rare to be either a greaser or a soc, to be so extreme in wealth or poverty.

I walked the halls between my classes, noticed Soda talking to that kid Steve I had seen at the diner last night. I didn't see Johnny anywhere and wondered if things had really been alright at his house after all. Maybe his parents were still up and fighting and he walked into a mess. I worried about it vaguely.

I looked forward to science class and Keith's antics. It felt like the only time each day where I knew I would laugh. I needed to laugh. My essay and failing English was wearing me down. My boredom was wearing me down. My uncertainty and worry about Johnny was wearing me down. I needed to forget it all for at least one class period.

In the beginning of science class, before the teacher got there, Keith was doing an impression of the teacher. He had the voice down amazingly, and even his quirky mannerisms, the way he would kind of stroke at his mustache after he asked a question. Everyone was laughing, some people were doubled over and holding onto their stomachs, not breathing they were laughing so hard. Then the teacher showed up and everyone tried to get serious, wiping their streaming eyes. I slid into my lab seat next to Keith, shaking my head and laughing a little.

"Hey, do you want to hang out sometime?" I asked him, feeling like an idiot for even suggesting it. Socs did not hang out with greasers, it just wasn't done. But maybe I was getting sick of the way things were done. He cocked one eyebrow at me.

"Don't you live over on the east side?" he said, and I nodded, shame filling up my cheeks with a red blush. I hung my head. I did. I lived on the east side, the crime side, the poor side, the poverty stricken side, the never get ahead side. When I hung out with anybody at all, it was Johnny Cade, a violent going nowhere screw up greaser.

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound like I didn't care, like I was thinking, "what of it?"

He just laughed, shrugged.

"Maybe sometime, kid," he said.

School was done, another day done. I gathered up all my books at my locker and sensed someone standing right near me. I shut my locker door to reveal Johnny, his jean jacket slung over his shoulder. He looked okay, and the devilish glint was back in his eyes. Things must have been alright at his house last night after all.

"Hey, man, where were you?" I said, shoving books into my bag. He slipped into his jacket and flipped up the collar. He was such a hood.

"What do you mean? Nowhere. I was here," I shrugged, just glad that he was okay. I'd had visions of him lying on the floor at his house, his head split open.

We walked home together, and on the way I saw one of those fancy cars kind of tailing us. It was a blue mustang, a real tuff car, and it was filled with a pack of socs in their madras shirts and wine colored sweaters and Italian leather shoes. I glanced at the converse sneakers that both me and Johnny wore. Mine were white high tops and so badly worn that they appeared to be a dingy gray, and there was a hole in one toe. Johnny's were black and scuffed and faded to an almost tar blue color.

The car stopped and five socs hopped out, and I felt this adrenaline kind of shoot through me. I looked at Johnny, who was kind of glaring at them but kind of smiling this evil smile. With someone else, or by myself, I could maybe run, or bluff them out with claims of having a weapon of some sort. But not with Johnny.

I shrunk into myself and drew closer to Johnny as they surrounded us, and taunted us, calling us low life greasers and scum and white trash. Johnny shouted back his own insults, calling them pampered rich boys and telling them all that they had was just daddy's money. He spit at them, and I watched the spit dribble slowly down one of their faces. We were done. We were gonna get pummeled, destroyed.

I didn't like fights, not at all. I didn't like punching and kicking people, and I didn't like getting punched or kicked. Johnny liked it, though. He thrived on it. He, in fact, threw the first punch, taking this tall soc with a crew cut completely off guard. The guy staggered back and Johnny punched him again. One of the others grabbed Johnny's arms and tried to pin them behind his back but Johnny kind of twisted in his grasp and kicked back at him at the same time, connecting solidly with his shin and the guy let him go and howled in pain. I wasn't doing anything.

There were punches and kicks all over the place, and one of them got Johnny in the stomach and he doubled over, and I punched that guy right in the head. I kicked another guy and by this time Johnny had stood up again and grabbed one of the guys around the neck and punched the daylights out of him. One of them knocked me down and kicked me right in the ribs so hard I thought he broke them.

We weren't going to win. There were five of them, and by the looks I thought they were about 17 or 18 or so. I was only 14. Johnny was 16 but he was small, despite being crazy. I watched him punch one and kick another and I saw them finally get his arms pinned behind his back and wail on him. I got knocked down again and curled up away from the kicks. They were really letting Johnny have it, and I saw the blood that was trickling from his busted lip. Blood was falling to the ground in round drops. He liked this? I couldn't understand why.

They left, left us curled up on the ground and moaning, and they got back into their fancy car and drove away.


	7. Chapter 7

I didn't want to get up, I didn't think I could get up. Everything hurt. I'd never been beaten up before, not like this. Sure, Johnny had dragged me into a few fights that I didn't want to be in, but it wasn't like this. Maybe I'd just stay here forever, curled up and aching, feeling this sharp pain in my stomach and my ribs and my back, feeling it kind of pulse to a dull ache and then become sharp again. I wondered what was broken. Everything felt bruised.

"C'mon," I heard Johnny say from somewhere above me. I tried to ignore him. He wanted me to get up but I didn't want to. Damn him, anyway. Maybe things wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been such a crazy nut, swearing at them and spitting at them. I was getting so tired of dealing with him, dealing with all the drama he seemed to bring upon himself, and to me. If he didn't live like two stupid houses down the street I wouldn't even be friends with him at all.

"Ponyboy, c'mon," he said, and now I heard worry in his voice. Worry? Was Johnny Cade actually worried about something? I opened one eye and peeked at him. He was a mess. Blood was pouring down his face from his nose and his busted lip. His shirt was torn, his jeans were torn. There was blood on his clothes. He looked, I hoped, worse than I did, yet he was standing up and wiping the blood off of his face with the sleeve of his jacket, and he was looking down at me with actual worry in his eyes. Good. Let him worry. I curled up and turned away from him, wanting to pass out, to sink into unconsciousness. Sweet oblivion.

He kneeled down beside me and shook me gently, but it still hurt.

"Pony, are you alright?" I supposed I couldn't torture him any longer, and it really wasn't his fault we got jumped. It was just that every situation like that felt like it was his fault. So I sat up and opened my eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just give me a minute, will ya?"

I felt a pulsing headache behind my eyes. I felt dizzy. I hated fights, hated this. But I stood up slowly and swayed, and Johnny grabbed onto my arm to steady me.

"I can't go home like this, my parents will kill me," I said, looking down at my own blood stained and torn clothes, "can I clean up at your house?" Johnny nodded, and I saw the brief look in his eyes, this uncertainty about going to his house. Under ordinary circumstances I really wouldn't want to go to his house, because I didn't trust his parents.

But we went anyway, and the first thing that struck me about his house was how it stank. It smelled like rotting garbage and drops of beer fermenting in a thousand empty beer cans and stale cigarette smoke and puke clogging up the plumbing. His parents were true non-functioning alcoholics, and no one cleaned this house. Johnny wouldn't be able to do it. It would take him all day for weeks, for months, to clean this house.

I looked around, and the second thing I noticed was the disarray. There wasn't much here, a metal table with a Formica top in the kitchen, a couch, a chair, a busted T.V., but everything seemed slightly off center, like someone had stumbled into it or been pushed into it. I saw holes in the plaster walls with puffs of plaster on the floor. I saw tin ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, filled to overflowing. I didn't see his parents anywhere.

"Where are your parents?" I whispered to him, afraid to wake them if they were sleeping in another room. He shrugged, his expression dark, unreadable. So I shrugged, too, and headed to the bathroom. His house had the same basic layout of my house, so I knew where all the rooms were. I peaked into the room that corresponded with my parents' bedroom and saw a double bed with no sheet, just a stained mattress and a tattered blanket thrown across it, and no parents.

In the bathroom mirror I saw my own bleeding lip and bruising eye socket. My parents would notice that. I ran the water and splashed it on my face, daubed at the blood with a bit of toilet paper. My clothes would be tougher. My T-shirt was splattered with blood, so were my jeans. I asked Johnny if I could wear some of his clothes, since we were the same size. He didn't answer and I didn't know where he was, so I checked the living room and kitchen and didn't see him. I went to his room and he was smoking a cigarette, blowing his smoke out the window. His room was so sad, so sad compared to me and Soda's room. There were no pictures, no posters, nothing. Not even stuff, like a football or baseball bat or board games or decks of cards. There was a narrow twin bed and a dresser, and that was it. Johnny had nothing.


	8. Chapter 8

"Johnny?" I said, and he turned toward me, his expression kind of blank. I looked at his bloody lip and the fading bruise around his eye from where his old man had hit him the other day. It would be a wonder to me if Johnny lived to be 20. Someone would probably kill him before that.

"Can I borrow some clothes?" I said, looking down at my bloody T-shirt and jeans that were beyond saving. He nodded, finished his cigarette and tossed it away out the window. I dug through his dresser and found some jeans and a T-shirt. I went back to the bathroom and changed, listening for the tell tale sounds of his parents coming home.

I looked at myself in the small mirror above the sink, dressed like Johnny and beaten and bruised like he was so often. I shuddered, feeling like, for a moment, I was becoming Johnny. I realized then all the kind of bad things I thought about him, how I thought he was kind of a violent nut. I knew he was a violent nut. But beyond that, I kind of blamed him not only for how he acted but how his parents were, out of work drunks. That wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault that he was treated so badly. It wasn't my fault that I was treated fairly well by my parents. It was a funny thing to blame him for, but there it was, the same way I blamed him for us getting jumped.

"You should change," I told him, going back into his room, unnerved by his silence, his blank stare.

"Why?" he said.

"Because your clothes are all covered in blood. C'mon, change, and then we'll go to my house and have supper," I wanted to be kind to him all of a sudden, feeling more like him dressed in his clothes.

"Okay," he said, and I left his room as he went to the dresser for clean clothes. In his living room I nearly gagged from the smell, that garbage smell that permeated everything. Even the air looked dirty, filled with huge dust motes in the dim light. I felt a little shaky and almost nauseas thinking that I might be here when his parents showed up. I willed him to hurry up, not wanting to run into them.

He came out dressed in fairly clean jeans and a white T-shirt, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jean jacket.

"Ready?" I said, and he nodded.

Walking the short distance to my house I knew all I had done was minimize the effects of this fight. They'd see my busted lip and black eye. I didn't want to make my parents worried, to further reinforce the thought in their heads that we lived in a bad neighborhood on the bad side of town.

Walking in my house I was first struck by the clean smell of it. I could smell supper cooking, vegetables and roasted meat. I could smell pine cleaners and dish soap. I breathed it in. My mother was in the kitchen and when she turned to me she gasped.

"Ponyboy!" she said, coming over to me, examining the cut on my lip and my bruising eye. She gazed at me in that worried way for a moment more before noticing Johnny, who had hung back by the door. Johnny did look worse than I did.

"Oh, God, Johnny…" she said, and reached up one hand toward him, maybe to examine the bruises on him like she had with me, but he flinched away from her upraised hand. It didn't stop her. She reached toward him more slowly, and he tilted his head and closed his eyes and let her.

"What happened to you two?" she said. No explanation would make her happy, so I fell back on the truth.

"It was some socs…they sort of jumped us," I said, and I realized I wasn't all that hungry. I was feeling too upset to be hungry. But I'd eat so I wouldn't worry my mother any further.

After supper Johnny had gone home, and I didn't worry about his parents. I couldn't always worry about him. I had to spend some time worrying about myself, and I was faced with my essay again. I was getting lost in it, with it, picturing me and Johnny at a park late at night, and maybe I'd be upset about something, about Darry hassling me, and Johnny would be telling me everything would be okay. And maybe the socs from today would find us there, mad at us because we had been talking to their girlfriends earlier at the drive in movies or something, and they'd jump us, try to drown us in the fountain, try to kill us. And the old rusty switchblade would be new and shiny and deadly, and Johnny would reach for it in his back pocket.

"What the hell happened to you?" I looked up, shocked out of my fictional world, and saw Soda staring at me and my bruises.

"Nothing. I got jumped,"

"Let me guess, Johnny was with you?" he said, and I looked at his average looking face, kind of round in the cheeks, his eyes obscured by his hair.

I looked down, "yeah," I said. Soda whistled through his teeth and shook his head.

"That kid is trouble," he said, and I felt like defending Johnny, it hadn't really been his fault. He didn't ever make anything better, but it hadn't been his fault. But I said nothing because I agreed with Soda. Johnny was trouble.

The next day at school I didn't see Johnny anywhere. It was about time for him to skip again, and I didn't worry that he'd gotten beat by his old man. He probably did. I sat with Steve at lunch, who was happier than the last time I'd seen him. He was gloating over some money his dad had given him to make up for being such a jerk.

Walking home alone, I wasn't afraid. Maybe I should have been, because another fancy car started tailing me and I thought of running, glad that Johnny wasn't here to make a bad situation worse. It pulled up to the curb and a tall, dark haired soc got out, and I glanced at the heavy rings on his fingers.

"Hey, greaser," he said, making the word greaser sound like a barely utterable insult. Another one got out, also tall, his dark hair wildly curly. The first one spoke to the second.

"Hey, Randy, look what we've got here, a little greaser," Randy smiled an eerie smile that didn't touch his eyes, and I was almost ready to run when the soc with the rings grabbed my arm and I felt the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and actually wished that Johnny was here to insult them and kick them and punch them.

"Ponyboy?" A third soc had joined them, and I felt the soc's hand wrapped around my bicep and squeezing, and it was like looking through a thick smog at the third soc with the familiar voice, and then I could see his face. It was Keith from science class. I shot him a pleading look.

"Bob, I know this kid, he's in my science class," Keith said, extracting Bob's hand from my arm. Bob blinked at me stupidly.

"This kid is in your class? But he's like 13..." Bob and Randy were looking puzzled, and Keith smiled and slung an arm around my shoulder.

"He's smart, he's like a genius, he got moved up a grade. You should see how insightful he is in class. He's my little buddy. You can't beat him up,"

I could feel my heart beating fast, and I could feel relief sweeping into all of my cells. I felt rescued.

"In fact, I told Ponyboy here that we could hang out sometime, and maybe we should do that now," Keith's eyes had lit up with this good idea, but I wasn't so sure I wanted to hang out with a couple of socs who were about to beat the shit out of me and probably still wanted to.

"I don't know, I probably should go home…" I said, and I saw Bob and Randy looking puzzled, but Keith was smiling like a chessy cat.

"No way, man. We'll go somewhere cool, like our country club. Have you ever eaten a salad with a chilled fork before? I bet you haven't. Maybe we can get our dads to give you a scholarship, can't waste a brain like yours, am I right? Let's go," He shoved Bob and Randy back toward the car and he pulled me by the collar of my T-shirt toward the car. I guessed I was going to have a high society afternoon whether I liked it or not.


	9. Chapter 9

I felt like a prisoner in the car, squeezed in the backseat between Randy and Keith, Bob was up front driving like a chauffeur. This was the nicest car I'd ever been in, man was it tuff. The seats were real leather and so soft, and there was this smell in the car I'd never smelled before, but I knew what it was. It was new car smell. Most of the cars I'd ever been in smelled like something might be rotting, like a squirrel in the trunk or something, or they smelled like antifreeze, a smell that always made me think of dried hay for some reason. Or they smelled like sweat and old sun.

We were heading out of the bad section of town and into the good section. I watched the subtle change out of the window, from the run down houses and apartment buildings to the nice big houses and mansions set back from the road, the mile of dark green manicured lawn in front of them. I sucked in my breath. What would have happened if Johnny had been with me? I didn't think even Keith would dare bring Johnny to some fancy country club.

We pulled up to this white building behind a dark circular drive, and it looked like a hotel made out of marble. I really wasn't in Kansas anymore. I blinked up at the white building shining the sun back at me, and then I looked down at my clothes. Torn jeans and a dingy T-shirt didn't seem like appropriate country club clothes, but I didn't have anything better. Besides, Keith basically kidnapped me and brought me here.

An old guy that looked like some butler from Europe opened the door for Bob, and Bob stepped out and handed him his keys. We all got out, too, and I saw the butler guy glance at me and raise his eyebrows slightly, but Keith just gave him a crazy grin.

"Is it okay that I'm here?" I whispered to Keith, my voice almost shaking, and he nodded and laughed.

"You'll be my guest, kid," he said.

The butler guy, who turned out to be the valet, took the keys and slid into the front seat of the car, and he said, "very good, sir," to Bob for no reason I could see. Sir. What was Bob? 17 or 18? I'd never been called sir by anyone in my life.

I followed everyone into the building, and inside was like a palace, there were marble columns and fountains, water pouring out of the mouths of cherubs, and bouquets of flowers, and the floor was big squares of marble or tile, and it was as shiny as a mirror. My clothes were getting crumbier by the second. I saw waiters in black ties, I saw women in long flowing dresses and pearl necklaces or diamond necklaces at their throats.

I didn't belong here. I belonged at dingy pool halls with warped wooden floors and the smell of beer permeating everything. I belonged in the vacant lot with the scrub grass and the broken bits of bottles.

We sat at a table with a white table cloth in the dining room, and I fidgeted in my seat as waiters filled my water glass. I smoked out of nervousness. Keith kept up a steady stream of comments.

"Man, do you always put your two-bits in?" I said, and he smiled, nodded, went on talking as salads arrived and the fork was cold. Then the meal arrived, it was this roasted something that literally melted in my mouth. I'd never had food that was so delicious. I supposed this was better than getting jumped.

I thought I knew what rich was, but looking around this place, the paintings that hung on the walls, the servants rushing around with trays of food, I didn't know. I was almost too overwhelmed to eat, but this food was good. Gourmet shit.

When dinner was over we piled back into the car after the valet guy drove it up to us. Bob and Randy sat in the front seat, me and old Two-bit were in the back.

"Well, kid, we hung out, just like you wanted," he said, and laughed. I wasn't sure if this was what I had in mind.

"Next time I'll hang out with you and your friends over on the east side," I nodded, but the thing was, of all the socs I knew or had come across, Keith would be the one who could fit in over in my neighborhood. It was being funny. It kind of defied social classes.

I started worrying about my damn essay again when I got home. I had to pass English. I had to bring that grade up. I got out all my papers about it, they were all over my desk. I tried out some more beginnings. 'Stepping out into the sunny day after the movie-'

"Hey, Pony, where ya been?" Soda said, flopping down on the bed. I glanced over at him.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said.

"Try me,"

"Okay, I was at one of the country clubs with a bunch of socs,"

"Fine. Don't tell me," Soda said. I just shrugged.

'Walking home from the movies alone wasn't such a bright idea. Greasers get jumped by the socs, which is short for the socials, the jet set, the west side rich kids. I'd never been jumped before but I saw Johnny after four socs got ahold of him, and it wasn't pretty…'

I was thinking of my blond tough guy character again. He'd be lean and tall and dangerous. You wouldn't want to cross this guy. He'd be as violent and impulsive as Johnny. I needed a name for him.

"Hey, Soda, what's a good name for some tough hood?" I said.

"James Dean," Soda said, yawning.

"Soda, c'mon," I said, doodling on the margins of my paper.

"John Wayne?" Soda said. I stared at the crumbled pack of Winstons on the window sill.

"Okay, " Soda said, "how about Dallas?"

Dallas Winston. Perfect. Now that he had a name I could see him. He was tall and he had blond hair that was shock white, and he never put grease in it because he didn't like the way it felt. He had small blue eyes, eyes like ice that were cold and hard with a hatred of the whole world.


	10. Chapter 10

I was tired when I woke up. Tired. But I got up and got ready for school, feeling like I was going through the motions. My mom was in the kitchen making breakfast and for a minute I was surprised to see her, thinking she was dead like she was in my story, my essay. It was playing with my mind.

I grabbed toast and headed out the door, glancing down toward Johnny's house. His house had the look of all unhappy houses, kind of closed up and uninviting. But I stared down toward it, wanting to see him. I wouldn't go to his house and see if he was there, though. His parents scared me too much to do that.

At school I looked for him in the hallways and out in the courtyard, but I didn't see him. I wouldn't see him during my regular day even if he was going to be here, just at lunch. So I shrugged it off, not wanting to think about him or worry about him, feeling kind of helpless.

I went to my classes, trying to concentrate but thinking of dialogue for my story. Thinking of the tense way Darry would talk to me, thinking of the almost motherly affection that Soda would show to me to counter Darry, thinking of Steve being bitter and angry because his father was such a jerk. Thinking of Keith Two-bit wise cracking and impersonating people. Thinking of my sorrow, and my brothers' sorrow that our parents had been killed. Thinking of Johnny hardly talking at all and the way he would flinch away from sudden movements. Thinking of Dallas Winston and how cool he was, how he'd glare at us all with his tiny blue eyes.

At lunch I scanned the cafeteria for Johnny or the commotion and trouble that Johnny's presence so often brought. Nothing. So I ate with my other friends, listening to their middle class problems, nodding while my mind was a million miles away. I had to pass English. I got put up a grade, I got everything so effortlessly. How had this happened?

Toward the end of the day in a study hall one of Johnny's teachers spoke to me.

"Ponyboy? Have you seen Johnny?" she said, and she was young, a new teacher, and I knew so much about her. She probably thought she could help a kid like Johnny. But looking at her nice clothes and her tasteful make-up and even just the way she spoke I knew she was from more money than we had, and I wondered if she knew all the problems that we had, that Johnny had. I squinted at her, thinking that she probably wouldn't be able to help him. He was beyond that kind of help now.

"Uh, no, not today," She knew I was his friend, his teachers had seen us together, and they all knew who I was, with my weird name and being put up a grade and being a greaser. Thinking about it, I realized I was probably his only friend.

"He hasn't been here for two days, is he sick?" she said, and I heard concern in her voice. I shook my head.

"I don't know, maybe," I said.

I walked home alone, kicking at little rocks and bits of glass along the way. I watched the gray clouds gather in the sky. I had a bag full of books and assignments and I was just going to go home and get lost in them. I could. I could read steadily for hours, I could knock out homework assignments like crazy, and I could think of the things in those text books, things like living in ancient Egypt and building the pyramids. I could study the key points of science chapters and think about the osmosis of cells, the beating of the human heart.

So I did it. I read until my eyes felt dry and scratchy, I wrote until my hand cramped up. When I looked out my window it was dark. I stretched, feeling the little bones in my back crack and bend. I was worried about Johnny, I don't know why it took all day for it to occur to me. I thought of the things that might have kept him out of school for two days.

I decided to go out and search for him, and I willed myself to go to his house if necessary. I glanced down my street and didn't see him in the group of kids playing baseball with a stick in the middle of the street, and I didn't see him at the lot. I headed to the diners and the pool halls, hoping he was there and not home. I went into the bar that had all the pool tables and the pinball machines, the smell of cheap beer hanging in the air like a mist.

I saw him, his back to me, playing pinball. I saw his jet black hair against the worn out jean jacket. I stood there, feeling relief and anger. I watched the little ball as it bounced against the sides of the game, listened to the beeps and sirens of the game.

"Hey," I said, walking over to the side of the game. He glanced at me quickly and then looked back at his game.

"Hey," he said, missing the ball and it shot down the hole.

"Look what you made me do," he said.

"Where have you been?" I said, watching him put in another quarter, watching the machine light up again.

"Nowhere," he said, releasing the little ball and pressing those red buttons on the side.

"You haven't been in school for two days," I said, surprised at the steel in my tone.

"What are you, my mother?" he said, but he was barely paying any attention to me. He was focused on the game. And that made me even angrier. I'd been worrying about him, one of his teachers asked me about him, and now he couldn't even pay any attention to me. I closed my eyes, thinking of how I'd practically seen him in a bloody crumbled heap in some corner of his house, and turns out he was just skipping because he didn't give a shit about anything.

"Hey!" I said, grabbing his arm, and through the sleeve of his jacket I felt his muscles tense. He jerked out of my grasp and turned to look at me so fast, his eyes blazing. I had his attention now.

"What the fuck, Ponyboy!" he said, letting the pinball just slide down that hole, the game forgotten.

"I'm talking to you, Johnny, the least you can do is pay attention to me, that's what the fuck!" I suddenly wanted to kill him. I at least wanted to punch him.

"Jesus Christ-" he started to say, but by now the bartender was looking at us and pointing.

"You two, by the pinball machine, get out!" he said, and he was the owner of this pool hall. You didn't mess with him. He'd throw anybody out at the first sign of a fight. Johnny looked at me then with anger, and under it was hurt. We both left like we were told. Outside he shoved me, hard. I nearly fell. But I didn't and I shoved him back and he did fall, because I was a lot madder than he was. Everything felt pent up.

He looked up at me and for a second, just a second, I thought he was going to cry. There was this look that trembled in his eyes, but it was gone as soon as it had come and then he was up and at me. I wasn't sure what happened, it happened so fast. He punched me and I punched him and then we were both on the ground trying to kill each other.

I managed to get untangled from him and I sat up, hugged my knees while he punched me a couple more times, and I felt like I was gonna cry. I didn't know how this fight happened, but it's easy to fight with Johnny. It doesn't take much. But I was coming back to my senses and held him off. And finally he stopped punching me and just stared at me through the blood, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"I'm sorry, Johnny, I just wanted to talk to you-" I started to say, but he cut me off.

"Talk! You're trying to kill me, you just come down and start this fight with me-"

"I know! I'm sorry, alright! I just wanted to talk to you, screw it," I said, getting up, dusting myself off, and I walked away.


	11. Chapter 11

I walked in the dark, not feeling the chill in the air. I didn't really know why I had fought with Johnny like that. What was it to me what he did? I shook my head and took a cigarette out of my pack, lit it with my hand cupped against the wind. It was this damn essay. I mean, the two characters I was basing on Johnny, Dallas Winston and the Johnny Cade in my story, they were difficult characters, and now that I was analyzing the real Johnny Cade a little more, maybe I was seeing things I hadn't seen before. Before this whole essay idea of mine he was just a neighborhood kid who was trouble. Yeah, I hung out with him, but he got in fights and he fought with me and I knew his parents were kind of violent drunks but I never really thought about it. Now, I could see how he was, how the violence was sort of a cover up for this deeply hurt center. I don't know. It just felt like I couldn't save him.

I couldn't save him. He was drowning in his life, this constant violence, skipping school. He'd drop out, sure as anything. He's already stayed back. And then what? A dead end job and maybe he'd meet some girl, some not so bright girl who might drink, and he might pick up drinking, too. And they'd have a kid or kids and little to no money and wouldn't the fights in that house be something to see? That would be his life and I couldn't stop it.

I felt this kind of creative surge, like creativity was just crackling through me. Both Johnny and Dallas would die in my essay because I couldn't save them. Johnny would have some tragic kind of death, a nice death scene in a hospital. Dallas would have a violent death, like getting gunned down by the cops under some street light. But in the essay maybe both of them could be trying to save me. Somehow. I didn't know.

I feel like I get these great ideas for this and then it just spins out like a tornado losing power. I felt aching bruises from where Johnny had punched me. I was tired. Time to go home.

The next morning I had a little of my usual energy back. I ate my cereal and marveled at the fact that my parents were actually alive. My dad leaves for work before I get up for school, and my mother makes breakfast every morning. I squinted my eyes at the sun streaming into the kitchen and imagined Darry in the kitchen, cracking eggs over a frying pan and giving me his stern look. I could hear his voice in my head, 'Ponyboy, you need to keep those grades up and stay outta trouble. The state is watching over us and you could get thrown in a boys' home so fast it would make your head spin,'

I thought I'd go and get Johnny this morning, make him come to school whether he wanted to or not. I was sorry I'd fought with him like that. I was worried, but with Johnny it was just so easy for anything to blow up into a fight.

I felt a little shaky going to his house. But I didn't care. His parents could do whatever. And I knew I couldn't really save Johnny from his life, from his lousy parents, and from himself, but I felt like I should at least try. I knocked on the door but no one answered, and I pushed it open. His house was never locked, same as ours. When there was nothing to steal there wasn't much reason to lock it up.

It was the same as the last time I'd been there, the furniture off center, the smell of garbage and old beer and trapped cigarette smoke. I crept to his room, wondering if he was even here. He took off a lot of nights, slept in the lot or crashed somewhere, but he was there, asleep in his room under one thin blanket. There wasn't even a sheet on his bed.

"Johnny," I said, loud enough to wake him. He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head.

"Johnny, c'mon," I said, and he didn't respond. I shook him a little. All I could see was his jet black hair sticking up from under the blanket.

"Leave me alone," he said, not really angry or anything, he just wasn't awake.

"We gotta go to school," I said, shaking him again. He was waking up and he uncovered his head and looked at me.

"I ain't going," he said.

"You skipped two days in a row, you have to come," I said.

"Why, what's the point?" he said, sitting up, reaching for his cigarettes.

"It's just, if you keep skipping you'll just flunk out…I don't know," I watched him smoke. I felt incapable of explaining it to him, how these choices today would lead to the dead ends of his future. I could see that so clearly, but I really didn't think he could.

He glared at me through the smoke but then shrugged, got up and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He put some more grease in his hair and combed it back, but it just fell forward again. I was edging out of that house, afraid his parents would wake up or something, and I ended up waiting for him on the porch. He came out with his jean jacket on with the collar flipped up.

"Alright, let's go," he said.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," I said as we walked, glancing at him. He was smoking another cigarette.

"That's okay, I can take you," he said, and grinned his crazy reckless grin at me. I smiled back, feeling relieved that he wasn't all pissed off at me. But I felt a kind of helpless feeling regarding him. Would dragging him to school today make any difference? I didn't think it would.

We had one of those pep rallies at the end of the day, and all of us crammed into that gym was always a little overwhelming. All those conversations going on all at once, blending into each other, and I felt like I could almost see the noise. I sat on the bleachers and thought about school, thought about Darry going to college. I'd go to college, too.

"What is this shit?" I looked up at the voice, it was Keith the soc, Two-bit.

"Uh, pep rally?" I said, and he did a dead on impression of the cheerleaders strutting around down on the gym floor. I had to laugh.

"Man, you are crazy,"

It started, the football players coming out in their uniforms, kind of acting like they were the most important things at this school. I saw Johnny across the gym, sitting by himself, his head down. I listened to Two-bit mocking the football players, and I laughed.

The cheerleaders came on, doing their cute little routines, and I couldn't help but watch one of them. She had long red hair and a pretty face. Her name was Cherry Valance, a real soc, uppity, a snob. But I watched the way the lights reflected off her red hair, such an unreal hair color. When girls dyed their hair red it looked bad, it looked fake. But when it was that real dark red like Cherry's, the way it looked against her pale skin, there was nothing more beautiful.


	12. Chapter 12

I watched Cherry down on the gym floor and listened to all the noise around me, all of the shouts and the conversations and the soft talking bouncing off the gym walls. I could still see Johnny across the gym, too, sitting by himself. I thought of my essay, which was really turning into kind of a short story or something, and I thought what if me and Johnny and Dally were hanging out at the drive-in movies or something and we see Cherry there, sitting in the section with the seats if you don't have a car. I could picture the whole thing as though it had happened. I could see how her hair would look in the dark and I could hear the way she'd snap her gum, hard and fast because Dally would be up to his old tricks again. And me and Johnny would be stunned into silence because Dally can get real dirty when he wants to.

I listened to Keith wise cracking about something, and he hardly sounded like a soc to me. He had become Two-Bit, a character in my essay/story. I could see Two-Bit, too, of course he looked like Keith except his sideburns were long and his hair was greased back and he wore what I wore, worn out jeans and T-shirts, but instead of tennis sneakers he'd wear boots with the heels.

"Looks like your friend is having some trouble," Keith said, and I whipped my head up at that. I'd been lost in my thoughts, creating this story out of raw clay.

"Who?" I said, glancing down at Cherry as she twirled and shook the oversized pompoms.

"Him, that black haired kid you always hang out with," he said, and I glanced over toward where Johnny had been sitting. He was standing now, and I could tell by his face, even from here, that he was getting pissed off. There were a few socs near him, but I was too far away to hear any of what they were saying. It was all drowned in the noise. I watched one of the socs poke him in the chest, and then I watched Johnny shove him and watched him go sprawling. It didn't last long. One of the teachers went over and yanked Johnny's jacket and dragged him out of the gym. Of course the teacher left the socs alone, that was nothing new. All kinds of authority figures favored them. It was their money or their manners or something, or their fancy clothes.

"He's a nut, that kid, huh?" Keith said, and I nodded.

"Yeah," I said, and it sounded more sad than I meant to say it.

These pep rally things are always at the end of the day, and when it ended and everyone headed to their lockers I ended up seeing Soda. It was funny, because I felt myself almost longing for the Soda in my story, the movie star handsome Soda who understood everything and always made me feel better and smoothed things over between me and Darry. I found myself longing for the Soda that I could talk to late at night about girls and about life. I blinked, looking at the real Soda, just an average ordinary kid with a nice smile and a round face, nothing special. He was talking about something, dinner or some errand my mother wanted him to run but he was pawning off on me.

"Listen, Ponyboy, she wanted me to go and get some stuff at the store for her but I don't have time, really. Will you do it?" I nodded and he gave me the money she gave him.

I had my school bag slung over my shoulder and I was heading to the store, not paying attention to the world around me. I was too busy thinking. In the essay me and Dal and Johnny can go to this drive-in movie and meet up with Cherry there, and she's not with her boyfriend because it's some soc who's drinking and getting drunk and she doesn't like that.

"Hey!" I looked up at the yell, and before I did I knew it was some angry soc. It's their tone, they just sound rich and pampered. So I looked up, knowing I was caught off guard. It was Bob and Randy and one of the others from the country club, but this time Two-Bit wasn't around to save me.

I could run for it, but they were already circling me.

"Hey, grease," Bob said, and I saw how the sun was shining off those rings of his. There were three of the socs. Could I take three of them? Probably not. I felt myself getting scared. I wasn't like Johnny. I couldn't do what he did, just start punching and kicking people like crazy. I wasn't that great at fighting. So I got scared and quiet, and listened to all three of them insult me, calling me a low life greaser and who did I think I was, going to their country club?

"Do you think we enjoyed bringing trash like you to that place?" Bob said. Bob did most of the talking, and he was drunk, or at least he had been drinking. I could smell it. I had to try and make a break for it, so I took off fast but they caught me, held my arms behind my back and started punching. One swift punch to my stomach and I was gasping for breath, tears in my eyes. That hurt like crazy. I couldn't catch my breath. Another punch to the stomach and there was this ball of pain, it was like something I could actually visualize, it was hard to explain.

"Leave him alone," I heard someone say, beyond the roar of pain I was feeling. I looked toward the familiar voice and so did the socs. Through the tears in my eyes I saw Johnny standing there, blurry, but it was him. I saw his black greasy hair and his faded jean jacket, and something in his hand.

"You heard me," he said, stepping toward Bob, and now I saw what he had. It was that rusty old switchblade he had found. The soc who was holding onto my arms didn't let go, but Bob turned away from me, turned his attention to Johnny.

"Get out of here, kid," he said to him, but I saw that look in Johnny's eyes. That was a dangerous look. That look was my basis for Dallas Winston. And then it was so quick, Johnny got his arm around Bob's neck and pressed that switchblade right against his jugular vein.

"Let him go or your friend gets it," Johnny said to the other two socs. The one holding my arms let me go and I doubled up in pain on the ground, hoping that Johnny didn't end up killing Bob. I was kind of praying, curled up in the fetal position. 'Don't let Johnny kill Bob, don't let Johnny kill Bob,' The other two were backing up slowly, staring at the tip of that rusty switchblade pressed into their friend's neck.

It was one of those kind of moments that takes more time than a clock can measure. I was on the ground writhing in pain but looking up at Johnny and Bob. The other two socs were staring with round eyes, backing up slowly, hands out in a defenseless gesture. Part of how Johnny got the jump on him was that Bob was drunk, and slow. Johnny was always pumped up with adrenaline, and that little fight in the gym made him mad.

We were all holding our breath, me, Randy, the other soc whose name I didn't know. Bob looked frightened in a drunken kind of way, a little separated from reality. Then Johnny pressed the button on that switchblade that makes it go back in, and he let Bob go and shoved him toward his friends. They lead Bob back to the car, and they got in and drove off. I was slowly getting my breath back.

Then Johnny was kneeling down by me, his hand on my shoulder.

"Pony, are you okay?" he said, his voice soft now, quiet, concern in those big black eyes of his. This was the Johnny Cade from my story, my essay. I felt almost dizzy with how fast he switches from one way of acting to another. And I almost started crying, and I wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because I'd been nearly beaten to a pulp, and maybe it was because Johnny saved me.


	13. Chapter 13

I was still in pain, those blows to my stomach were hard. I felt the tears streaming down my face and I felt so stupid, crying in front of anyone, but especially Johnny. I wiped the tears hurriedly away but stayed sitting on the ground.

"C'mon, hey, you're alright," Johnny said, his voice soft and almost soothing. I blinked up at him, feeling like I hadn't understood things about him before. I kind of liked how things were before I started writing this stupid essay, when I thought I had my world figured out. I had thought that I knew that Johnny was just trouble, just some fucked up kid who wouldn't amount to anything.

"You could have killed him," I said, still not getting up. Johnny decided to sit down with me.

"Yeah. But I didn't," And he grinned. I had to smile, too.

"You get the electric chair for killing people," I said to him, feeling another wave of pain.

"Jesus, Pony, I know! I would never have killed him…it was just a bluff,"

It was starting to swirl through my head so fast, these ideas. I was thinking how I had thought Johnny was just trouble, but really the socs messed with us, how was that his fault? And how was it his fault that his parents were the way they were? And if I thought of him like that, like some juvenile delinquent, and I was a greaser, too, then how must outsiders see him? But maybe we were the outsiders, outside of everything.

"Here you go," he said, handing me a cigarette from his crumpled pack. I took it and lit it, feeling a little steadier as I smoked. It was hard to put it even to myself, but I think I was wrong about some things, and maybe the socs are wrong, maybe everybody's wrong when they just look at a kid's greasy hair and worn out old clothes and they see the poor neighborhood they live in and they just assume stuff. Maybe everyone has some kind of potential, some kind of worth beyond what you can see.

I smoked that cigarette down, feeling better. I thought of some things for this essay/story I had going, some cool things. The Johnny Cade in my story, the quiet, scared kid, he can kill Bob. That would be neat, to have the most angelic character a murderer. The worst thing you can do, the going to hell and the electric chair thing, that character can do that, to save me. And then we'll both run to Dally, who will help us. So the meanest, toughest character can be kind, and the kindest, gentlest character can be a killer. But it will be in self defense, that's how I'll soften it.

When the cigarette was done I stood up and brushed myself off, and Johnny stood up, too. I started walking home, and he was gonna take off, I could tell. That was fine. I had a lot of writing to do. But I grabbed his arm before he could leave, and I felt the slight tensing of his muscles. But he didn't jerk away.

"Hey, thanks," I said, wondering what kind of shape I would have been in if he hadn't shown up.

"No problem," he said, flipping the hair out of his eyes. I watched him go his own way, to his house or the pool halls or wherever he was going. It occurred to me that Johnny might not think any better of himself than I used to. He might think he's just a fucked up kid with no future, no hope, no way out. That's Dallas Winston, too. Then it kind of shimmered there for a second, looking at Johnny and the way his heavily greased hair gleamed in the sun. This essay, this story about outsiders, maybe it could show people, show kids like Johnny that there might be some kind of hope, there might be something better…I didn't know. It was hard to describe it, but it seemed like there were a bunch of us, poor little wrong side of the tracks greaser outsiders all over the place, all over the country, maybe the world, who knew? Then it kind of slipped away.

"What's wrong with you?" Johnny said, snapping me back to where we were. I blinked at the afternoon sun, felt the ache of the bruises, the punches and the kicks. I shook my head.

"Nothing. Listen, I got a lot of homework to do, but if you want to come over later…" It was only like the second time I'd invited him over. I saw his eyes widen in surprise, just slightly. He was hiding it, though. Johnny was cool.

"Yeah, maybe," he said, but I figured he'd come over.

I walked slowly home, all the thoughts swirling again. It was like I was seeing this essay in these little flashes. I'd be at the movies, I'd get jumped alone, Soda and Darry and everybody would run the socs off. The movies, the drive in at night, and me and Dally and Johnny would meet up with Cherry and maybe a friend of hers. Her boyfriend would be Bob, the drunken soc. I had no idea if her boyfriend was really Bob. I was pretty sure she had one. She was one of the prettiest girls in the school. And that made me think of something. Girls were always getting judged by how pretty they were, like boys got judged on how much grease they put in their hair or what kind of a car they could afford. I guessed it was the same with girls, they weren't whatever way they looked, not all the time. Maybe some of the pretty ones were real ugly on the inside.

I'd almost forgot I was on my way to the store for my mother. I kept forgetting my parents were still real. Maybe I was going crazy, this whole idea of writing this thing was making me crazy. It had seemed so simple before, just write a little essay for extra credit for English. I was turning it into this huge thing, this thing that was getting beyond me somehow.

I went to the store and got the stuff, then went home. Soda was in our room. I felt it again, my longing for the perfect Soda in my essay, the movie star Soda who would listen to me, who would understand all my problems. I wanted it so bad I attempted to have that relationship with the real Soda, the average looking and average acting real life brother I had.

"I had a rough day," I said, looking at him from under my long hair. He was reading some motorcycle magazine and barely glanced at me.

"Oh, yeah?" he said while he was reading. I gritted my teeth.

"I got the stuff at the store you wanted me to get," I said, feeling achy and tired from that fight, the adrenaline leaving me in waves.

"Good," he said, without looking up. I gave up. Screw him. It was made up, anyway. What did it matter?

We had supper and then Soda took off somewhere, with someone, I wasn't even paying any attention to him. My dad was gathering some tools in the other room.

"Ponyboy, come with me," he said, and I was still amazed that he was here. I felt acutely the sorrow and longing my parents' deaths would cause. I felt how I would try to replace them with my brothers and my friends.

I followed him outside. He had acquired a junk car that he thought he could get running again, and he spent an hour or so showing me how to rebuild an engine. I didn't quite get all of it, cars weren't my thing, but I liked hearing his voice as he patiently explained what was wrong with it and what you needed to do to fix it.

Then it was time to wrestle with my essay. I wrote out some of the scenes I had thought of, wrote about how Darry was rough without meaning to be and how Soda tried to smooth things over between us and how Dally was always trying to break laws and how Johnny was so quiet and looked down and had his hands shoved into the pockets of his jean jacket. I wrote about how he carried a switch blade, a six inch switch blade ever since the socs jumped him in the vacant lot and almost killed him.

Tired, tired, and I was stretching out on my bed reading a text book when I heard footsteps in the hall. I thought it was just Soda until I heard that deep and scratchy voice.

"Ponyboy?" It was Johnny, and I'd forgotten I said he should come over, and my eyes were almost closed. But I sat up and looked at him. He was standing in the doorway, looking kind of sad and defeated, his head down.

"Hey, Johnny," I said, yawning without meaning to. I noticed then that something was wrong with him. None of the energy I usually associate with him was present. He just hung in the doorway, hands shoved into his pockets.

"Come in here. What's wrong?" I said, and he came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

"My folks are fighting," he said.

"Are you okay?" I said quickly, knowing what could happen to him when they fought. He glanced at me then looked down again.

"Yeah. I didn't even go there, I just heard them, you could hear them all the way down the street…"

This was true. I'd heard them before. Not tonight, but other nights. The Cades were crazy drunks, and they'd have fights where they threw furniture.

"It's just, no one notices when I walk in that house, and no one notices when I walk out. Sometimes it's better when my old man is hitting me, because at least he knows who I am then…like I matter,"

I knew things were bad at Johnny's house, I knew that, but to hear him put it this way. He would rather be hit than ignored. Jesus. I didn't know what to say to him. What can you say to that?


	14. Chapter 14

Johnny took a deep shuddery breath and then put his head in his hands. I sat up, looking at him. He was crying. I'd never seen him cry. I watched his shoulders shake with the sobs, but it was brief, like a storm that comes in out of nowhere.

"I just don't think I can take it anymore," he said, his voice kind of muffled. I didn't know what to do. I wouldn't be able to take his life, either.

"You can't, listen to me, you can't let right now determine everything…there's still time, I mean, you can make things different. Just because your parents are…you know…unsupportive, violent, they drink all the time…just because they're like that it doesn't mean…" I couldn't express it right. I meant that he had to overcome this, his parents' abuse and indifference. At some point you have to take control of your life. I knew this, at 14 I knew this. But I didn't think Johnny ever would, and I couldn't explain it right. But he had lifted up his head and was looking at me, his large dark eyes wet with the tears that had stopped. He looked like he wanted me to keep talking, so I did.

"You can be more than what everybody expects of you…don't let what your parents think and what all the kids at school think and what all the teachers think get in the way. They don't know what it's like to be you, they don't know about the beatings and getting ignored all the time. No one knows everything about you, or even anything at all, you know? Just think, fuck them, and fuck your parents. It isn't your fault things are like this, but it'll be your fault with what you make of things for the rest of your life. You know?" I didn't think he'd know, I barely knew what I was talking about, but he nodded.

He swallowed hard and looked down again, but then he looked back at me, and I saw that other side of him again, that side that is violent and basically says to everybody, "fuck you," and now I kind of saw why he was like that. It was good to be like that in a way, except it was so destructive for him. But all those fights he got into, all the trouble he caused, now I saw it was sort of a way of trying to save himself.

"You're so lucky," he said, "your parents are better than mine, your life is better than mine, and you're smart…"

"Yeah, I'm so smart I'm failing English…" I said, surprised at how bitter I sounded.

"Yeah, but you can pass it, you know this make-up essay thing you're doing will get an A. I could never get an A, no matter how hard I tried…"

"But you've never tried," I said, and it was point blank. He was looking at me with those dark dark eyes of his, and all the pain was so visible in his eyes.

"Yeah, I have. I've done homework and studied and I still failed the fucking thing, so what was the point? I'm lousy at school, my parents hate me-"

"They don't hate you," I told him, and the tears had all dried up like some rain storm in the desert, and anger was taking its place.

"They do, why do you think my old man is hitting me all the time for? Why do you think they always tell me how much trouble I am, and how stupid I am, and how I've wrecked their lives?" Such anger, and it came so quick after he was sitting here crying. I felt so bad for him, I'd never realized his parents would say that kind of stuff to him, that he was stupid and that he wrecked their lives. I thought of my own parents, how supportive they were, how they told me every day that they love me, how they do all kinds of stuff for us, me and Soda and Darry. Poor Johnny.

"But that's just it, you know? Can't you see? You didn't do that to their lives, they did. They're the ones drinking all the time and fighting all the time and being mean to you. You're their son, and what do they do to you? Jesus, Johnny, it isn't normal for your old man to hit you with belts and throw you to the floor and give you black eyes and shit. He's abusive, and that's his fault. Not only do they abuse you and ignore you, but they're trying to get you to think it's your fault. You can't believe the shit they say to you,"

He was looking at me, and the anger was kind of wavering. I wondered if he was believing any of this. This was something I wanted in my essay, this idea, that you can take control of your life somehow, whether you're an outsider or whether your rich parents make all the decisions for you, like it must be like with some of the socs. Things are rough all over, but it always seems like the other guy has it a little or a lot better than you do.

Johnny didn't say anything but he had that look like he was thinking about what I said.

"It's late now, you want to try and get some sleep?" I said to him, because of course he couldn't go to his house tonight, not if his folks were fighting. He nodded and I got him the extra blanket out of the closet.

He was falling asleep, I could hear the change in his breathing, but I was wide awake. I was thinking of some symbolism for my essay, like when Johnny kills the soc that can kind of represent him taking control of his life…not letting people hurt him anymore, and leaving his parents because we'll run away then. And when we run away we can cut our hair, and that will show that we're not greasers, we're not affiliated with some group, and that we're becoming ourselves, taking control of our own lives and leaving the group behind.


End file.
